THE BARBER’S CHAIR,
AND
THE HEDGEHOG LETTERS.
[Illustration: Engraved by W. H. Mote
DOUGLAS JERROLD.
_Taken from the Marble Bust by E. H. Bailey, R.A.F.R.S._]
THE BARBER’S CHAIR,
AND
THE HEDGEHOG LETTERS.
BY
DOUGLAS JERROLD.
EDITED, WITH AN INTRODUCTION, BY HIS SON,
BLANCHARD JERROLD.
[Illustration]
London:
CHATTO AND WINDUS, PICCADILLY.
1874.
[Illustration]
CONTENTS.
PAGE
INTRODUCTION, vii
THE BARBER’S CHAIR, 1
THE HEDGEHOG LETTERS--
1. To Peter Hedgehog, at Sydney, 211
2. To Mrs Hedgehog of New York, 216
3. To Mrs Hedgehog of New York, 222
4. To Michael Hedgehog, at Hong-Kong, 228
5. To Mrs Barbara Wilcox, at Philadelphia, 231
6. To Mr Jonas Wilcox, Philadelphia, 234
7. To John Squalid, Weaver, Stockton, 239
8. To ---- ----, Naples, 244
9. To Mrs Hedgehog of New York, 247
10. To Samuel Hedgehog, Galantee Showman, Ratcliffe Highway, 252
11. To Chickweed, Widow, Penzance, 257
12. To Isaac Moss, Slop-seller, Portsmouth, 260
13. To Mrs Hedgehog of New York, 263
14. To Mrs Hedgehog of New York, 272
15. To Miss Kitty Hedgehog, Milliner, Philadelphia, 279
16. To Mrs Hedgehog, New York, 285
17. To Michael Hedgehog, Hong-Kong, 290
18. To Richard Monckton Milnes, Esq., M.P., 293
19. To Isaac Moss, Slop-seller, Portsmouth, 297
20. To Mrs Hedgehog, New York, 300
21. To Sir J. B. Tyrell, Bart., M.P. for North Essex, 308
22. To Mrs Hedgehog, New York, 312
23. To Mrs Hedgehog, New York, 319
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
INTRODUCTION.
These dialogues on passing events appeared in Douglas Jerrold’s Weekly
Newspaper, a journal started by my father in 1846. They became at once
very popular. The idea was a fresh and happy one that, like “Caudle’s
Lectures,” went home to all classes of readers. Indeed, in Mrs Nutts we
have indications of Mrs Caudle’s vein: Mrs Nutts might have been a poor
relation of the Caudle family. Nutts is such a barber as the Gossip
was, who for many years occupied a little shop against Temple Bar--with
one door in the City and the other in Middlesex. He was the most
talkative, the most knowing, the most confident of barbers. His mind
had possibly been sharpened by the distinguished men from the Temple,
and from the Fleet Street newspaper offices, whom he had shaved. He
had more than a smattering of literary and forensic gossip: he was
something of a humourist, and, like Mr Nutts, it took very much in the
way of news to surprise him. Mr Nutts observes that he has had so much
news in his time, that he has lost the flavour of it. He could relish
nothing weaker than a battle of Waterloo. To this state of satiety had
the Temple Bar barber shaved and talked himself.
Indeed it is my firm belief that the “Barber’s Chair,” which in 1847
was set up in the offices of Douglas Jerrold’s Weekly Newspaper, next
door to the Strand Theatre, was the chair taken from Temple Bar; and
that the most loquacious and original of barbers sat for Mr Nutts.
These weekly humorous commentaries on passing events, made by Mr Nutts
and his customers, carry me back to the bright time when they were
written. It was about the happiest epoch of my father’s life. He had
won his place; he had troops of friends; he could gather Dickens, Leigh
Hunt, Maclise, Macready, Mark Lemon, Lord Nugent, and other merry
companions, to dine under his great tent by the mulberry-tree at West
Lodge; he was in good health--a rare enjoyment in his case; and his own
newspaper and magazine were prospering. On the stage, in the volumes
of _Punch_, and in his own organs, he was addressing the public. All
his intellectual forces were at their brightest. With Dickens, Mr
Forster, Leech, and Lemon he had recently delighted picked audiences
as Master Stephen in “Every Man in his Humour.” He wrote about this
time to Dickens that his newspaper was a substantial success; and
that henceforth he was beyond the reach of stern Fortune, who had
treated him roughly for many a weary year. Dickens, in reply, said,
“Two numbers of the ‘Barber’s Chair’ have reached me. It is a capital
idea, and capable of the best and readiest adaptation to things as they
arise.”
Suddenly the glowing lights of the picture faded. A daughter who was
living in Guernsey fell dangerously ill; and he was called away from
the editorial chair, and from the “Barber’s Chair.” He was so affected
by the danger in which he found my sister that he could not write a
line. Douglas Jerrold’s Weekly Newspaper began to appear without Mr
Nutts and his customers; and each week the newsboys would ask, “Any
Barber?”
Answered in the negative, they would take a less number of copies.
Week after week, while my father remained away, the circulation of
the paper fell. Not only was his pen absent, but he had weighted it
with heavy contributors, who were possibly sound, but unquestionably
dull. He could not say nay to a friend; and directly he had installed
himself as editor of a weekly journal, he was besieged. He would take
a series, thinking rather of the pleasure he was giving the writer
than of the way in which the public would receive it. Thus he became
entangled in a currency series of interminable length, that tried the
patience of readers to the utmost. In Angus Reach he had a lively and
spirited colleague, and Frederick Guest Tomlins was a fair manager; but
these could not make way, in his absence, against the dull men, and
the decline of circulation continued. My father returned to London to
find a newspaper which he had left a handsome property, dwindled to a
concern that hardly paid its expenses.
The “Barber’s Chair” was resumed, and with it the flagging paper
revived. Messrs Nutts, Nosebag, Tickle, Bleak, Slowgoe, and the rest
of the authorities of the barber’s shop, talked about the events
of the week in the old sprightly manner. Nutts and his wife cross
to France, and the lady is rudely treated at the Customhouse. They
were searched, said Nutts, as though they had brought a cutler’s shop
and a cotton-mill in every one of their pockets. Slowgoe reproaches
the barber as the advocate of universal peace, “and all that sort of
stuff;” and defends war on the ground that “there’s nothing so little
as doesn’t eat up something as is smaller than itself.”
One week, a poor babe is picked up in a basket, on a doorstep: the same
week the papers have an account of the betrothal of the young Queen
of Spain to a man whom she loathed. She sobbed as she was forced to
plight her troth to him. The two cases are contrasted in the barber’s
shop. On the one hand we have Betsy of Bermondsey, and on the other
Isabella of Spain. Betsy gets on in life “as a football gets on by all
sorts o’ kicks and knocks.” Betsy has the humblest fortune, but she
gives her heart away, and is all the lighter and rosier for the gift.
And “she marries the baker, and in as quick a time as possible she’s
in a little shop, with three precious babbies, selling penny rolls,
and almost making ’em twopennies by the good-nature she throws about
’em.” Then comes the case of the Queen of Spain--a “poor little merino
lamb!” Next week Mr Bleak reads glorious news--the Duke of Marlborough
intends shortly to take up his permanent residence at Blenheim Palace.
Whereupon Nosebag observes, “Well, that’s somethin’ to comfort us for
the ’tato blight;” and he wonders why the papers that tell the people
when dukes and lords change their houses, don’t also tell them when
they change their coats. Nutts supplies an instance: “We are delighted
to inform our enlightened public that the Marquis of Londonderry
appeared yesterday in a bran-new patent paletot. He will wear it for
the next fortnight, and then return to his usual blue for the season.”
Gilbert à Beckett had ridiculed the Court newsman and the Jenkinses
of the period, years before. One bit was especially good: “Her Royal
Highness the Princess Victoria walked yesterday morning in Kensington
Gardens. We are given to understand that her Royal Highness used both
legs.”
Farther on there is a conversation in the shop on the possibility of
contemplating such a social revolution as the marriage of a princess
with a commoner. “What!” cries Slowgoe, “marry a princess to a
husband with no royal blood! do you know the consequence? What would
you think if the eagle was to marry the dove?” Nutts replies, “Why,
I certainly shouldn’t think much of the eggs.” They were, for the
most part, “dreadful Radicals” in Mr Nutts’ shop. They said many good
things, however. Mr Tickle remarks, “Married people grin the most
at a wedding, ’cause other folks can get into a scrape as well as
themselves.” Slowgoe opines that “the world isn’t worth fifty years’
purchase,” because the railway people are using up all the iron, which
“we may look upon as the bones of the world.” Nutts says, “The real
gun-cotton’s in petticoats.” Again, “Family pride, and national pride,
to be worth anything, should be like a tree: taking root years ago, but
having apples every year.” He describes Justice as keeping a chandler’s
shop in the Old Bailey, to “serve out penn’orths to poor people.”
In due course the dialogues of Mr Nutts and his customers were brought
to a close. The sage reflections of Mr Tickle were left unreported,
albeit at the very last he was at his best. “How often,” he remarked
to loyal Mr Slowgoe, “has Fortune crowned where she ought to have
bonneted.”
Other series were essayed in the newspaper. In 1848 my father went to
Paris, well furnished with letters of introduction to Lamartine and the
prominent men of the Republican Government, to write a number of papers
on the aspects of the French capital. He would never speak about that
journey afterwards. He was not at home by the banks of the Seine. He
hated turmoil. He could never write in a hurry, nor under uncomfortable
circumstances. He felt directly he had reached the hotel that he had
made a mistake, and that descriptive reporting was no gift of his. His
secretary was sent abroad to gather bits of information, and brought
back a budget of peculiar and exclusive news in the evening--but it
was left unused. Even the letters of introduction remained upon the
writing-table; and they were never delivered. Only a few columns of
writing ever reached the newspaper; and “Douglas Jerrold in Paris” had
been advertised far and wide!
In brief, Douglas Jerrold had tired of his newspaper. He could not
work up against the tide. The break in the “Barber’s Chair,” and the
consequent loss of circulation, had never been recovered; whereas the
Currency series, signed Aladdin, was interminable, and its dulness
provoked protests and wearied out subscribers. The papers were perhaps
admirable. They were written by a very clever man. But they should have
been in the _Banker’s Magazine_, or the _Economist_, and not in the
columns of a popular newspaper. The end was a heavy loss, which might
have been substantial fortune. It was a bitter result, brought about
by the editor’s inability to sustain a continuous effort; and by his
easy-going friendship, that led him to open his columns to incompetent
writers. This latter editorial defect harmed the _Illuminated
Magazine_, and hastened the death of the _Shilling Magazine_. Both were
suffocated by importunate dullards, who would besiege the editor in his
study, and never leave him till they had obtained his consent to print
a score of articles from their fatally facile pens.
Of Douglas Jerrold’s Weekly Newspaper there remains only--“The Barber’s
Chair.” It is a bright remnant, however; and this, I trust, the reader
will fully admit.
BLANCHARD JERROLD.
REFORM CLUB, _June 1874_.
[Illustration]
_THE BARBER’S CHAIR._
CHAPTER I.
SCENE.--_A Barber’s Shop in Seven Dials. =Nutts= (the Barber)
shaving =Nosebag=. =Pucker=, =Bleak=, =Tickle=, =Slowgoe=,
=Nightflit=, =Limpy=, and other customers, come in and go out._
_Nightflit._ Any news, Mr Nutts? Nothin’ in the paper?
_Nutts._ Nothing.
_Nightflit._ Well, I’m blest if, according to you, there ever is. If
an earthquake was to swallow up London to-morrow, you’d say, “There’s
nothin’ in the paper: only the earthquake.”
_Nutts._ The fact is, Mr Nightflit, I’ve had so much news in my time,
I’ve lost the flavour of it. ’Couldn’t relish anything weaker than a
battle of Waterloo now. Even murders don’t move me. No; not even the
pictures of ’em in the newspapers, with the murderer’s hair in full
curl, and a dresscoat on him: as if blood, like prime Twankay, was to
be recommended to the use of families.
_Tickle._ There you go agin, Nutts: always biting at human nature. It’s
only that we’re used to you, else I don’t know who’d trust you to shave
him.
_Slowgoe._ Tell me--Is it true what I have heard? Are the Whigs really
in?
_Nutts._ In! Been in so long that they’re half out by this time. As
you’re always so long after everybody else, I wonder you ain’t in with
’em.
_Bleak._ Come now! I was born a Whig, and won’t stand it. In the battle
of Constitution aren’t the Whigs always the foremost?
_Nutts._ Why, as in other battles, that sometimes depends upon how many
are pushing ’em behind.
_Tickle._ There’s another bite! Why, Nutts, you don’t believe good of
nobody. What a cannibal you are! It’s my belief you’d live on human
arts.
_Nutts._ Why not? It’s what half the world lives upon. Whigs and
Tories. Tell you what; you see them two cats. One of them I call Whig,
and t’ other Tory; they are so like the two-legged ones. You see Whig
there, a-wiping his whiskers. Well, if he in the night kills the
smallest mouse that ever squeaked, what a clatter he does kick up! He
keeps my wife and me awake for hours; and sometimes--now this is so
like Whig--to catch a mouse not worth a fardin’, he’ll bring down a
row of plates or a teapot or a punch-bowl worth half-a-guinea. And
in the morning when he shows us the measly little mouse, doesn’t he
put up his back and purr as loud as a bagpipe, and walk in and out my
legs, for all the world as if the mouse was a dead rhinoceros. Doesn’t
he make the most of a mouse, that’s hardly worth lifting with a pair
of tongs and throwing in the gutter? Well, that’s Whig all over. Now
there’s Tory lying all along the hearth, and looking as innocent as
though you might shut him up in a dairy with nothin’ but his word and
honour. Well, when he kills a mouse, he makes hardly any noise about
it. But this I will say, he’s a _little_ greedier than Whig; he’ll eat
the varmint up, tail and all. No conscience for the matter. Bless you,
I’ve known him make away with rats that he must have lived in the same
house with for years.
_Bleak._ Well, I hate a man that has no party. Every man that is a man
ought to have a side.
_Nutts._ Then I’m not a man; for I’m all round like a ninepin.
That will do, Mr Nosebag. Now, Mr Slowgoe, I believe you are next.
(_=Slowgoe= takes the chair._)
_Slowgoe._ Is it true what I have heard, that the Duke of Wellington (a
great man the Duke; only Catholic ’Mancipation is a little spick upon
him)--is it true that the Duke’s to have a ’questrian statue on the
Hyde Park arch?
_Tickle._ Why, it _was_ true, only the cab and bus men have petitioned
Parliament against it. They said it was such bad taste ’twould frighten
their horses.
_Slowgoe._ Shouldn’t wonder. And what’s become of it?
_Tickle._ Why, it’s been at livery in the Harrow Road, eating its head
off, these two months. Sent up the iron trade wonderful. Tenpenny nails
are worth a shilling now.
_Slowgoe._ Dear me, how trade fluctuates! And what _will_ Government do
with it?
_Tickle._ Why, Mr Hume’s going to cut down the army estimates--going
to reduce ’em--our Life Guardsmen; one of the two that always stands
at the Horse Guards; and vote the statue of the Duke there instead.
Next to being on the top of a arch, the best thing, they say, is to
be under it. Besides, there’s economy. For Mr Hume has summed it up;
and in two hundred years, five weeks, two days, and three hours, the
statue--bought at cost price, for the horse is going to the dogs--will
be cheaper by five and twopence than a Life-Guardsman’s pay for the
same time.
_Slowgoe._ The Duke’s a great man, and it’s my opinion----
_Nutts._ Never have an opinion when you’re being shaved. If you whobble
your tongue about in that way, I shall nick you. Sorry to do it; but
can’t wait for your opinion. Have a family, and must go on with my
business. Anything doing at the playhouses, Mr Nosebag?
_Nosebag._ Well, I don’t know; not much. I go on sticking their bills
in course, as a matter of business; but I never goes. Fash’nable
hours--for now I always teas at seven--won’t let me. As I say, I stick
their posters, but I haven’t the pride in ’em I used to have.
_Tickle._ How’s that, Nosey?
_Nosebag._ Why, seriously, they have so much gammon. I’ve stuck
“Overflowing Houses” so often, I wonder I haven’t been washed off
my feet. And then the “Tremendous Hits” I’ve contin’ally had in my
eye--Oh, for a lover of the real drama--you don’t know my feelings!
_Nutts._ The actors do certainly bang away in large type now.
_Nosebag._ And the worst of it is, Mr Nutts, there seems a fate in it;
for the bigger the type the smaller the player. I could show you a
playbill with Mr Garrick’s name in it not the eighth of an inch. And
now, if you want to measure on the wall “Mr Snooks as Hamlet,” why, you
must take a three-foot rule to do it. Don’t talk on it. The players
break my heart; but I go on sticking ’em of course.
_Nutts._ To be sure. Business before feelings. Have you seen Miss
Rayshall, the French actress at the St James’s?
_Nosebag._ Not yet. I’m waiting till she goes to the ’Aymarket.
_Tickle._ But she isn’t a-going there.
_Nosebag._ Isn’t she? How can she help it? Being of the French stage,
somebody’s safe to translate her.
_Tickle._ Ha, so I thought. But all the French players have been put
on their guard; and there isn’t one of ’em will go near the Draymatic
Authors’ Society without two policemen.
_Pucker._ Well, I’m not partic’lar; but really, gen’l’men, to talk
in this way about plays and players, on a Sunday morning too, is a
shocking waste of human life. I was about to say----
_Nutts._ Clean as a whistle, Mr Slowgoe. Mr Tickle, now for you.
(_=Tickle= takes the chair._)
_Pucker._ I was about to say, it’s nice encouragement to go
a-soldiering--this flogging at Hounslow.
_Nutts._ Yes, it’s glory turned a little inside out. For my part,
I shall never see the ribbands in the hat of a recruiting soldier
again--the bright blue and red--that I shan’t think of the weals and
cuts in poor White’s back.
_Pucker._ Or his broken heart-strings.
_Nutts._ What a very fine thing a soldier is, isn’t he? See him in all
his feathers, and with his sword at his side, a sword to cut laurels
with--and in my ’pinion, all the laurels in the world was never worth a
bunch of wholesome watercresses. See him, I say, dressed and pipeclayed
and polished, and turned out as if a soldier was far above a working
man, as a working man’s above his dog--see him in all his parade
furbelows, and what a splendid cretur he is, isn’t he? How stupid
’prentices gape at him, and feel their foolish hearts thump at the drum
parchment, as if it was played upon by an angel out of heaven! And how
their blood--if it was as poor as London milk before--burns in their
bodies, and they feel for the time--and all for glory--as if they could
kill their own brothers! And how the women----
_Female voice._ (_From the back._) What are you talking about the
women, Mr Nutts? Better go on with your shaving, like a husband and a
father of a family, and leave the women to themselves.
_Nutts._ Yes, my dear. (_Confidentially._) You know my wife?
Strong-minded cretur.
_Pucker._ For my part, to say nothin’ against Mrs Nutts, I hate women
of strong minds. To me they always seem as if they wanted to be men,
and couldn’t. I love women as women love babies, all the better for
their weakness.
_Nosebag._ Go on about the sojer.
_Nutts._ (_In a low voice._) As for women, isn’t it dreadful to think
how they _do_ run after the pipeclay? See ’em in the Park--if they
don’t stare at rank and file, and fall in love with hollow squares by
the heap. It is so nice, they think, to walk arm-in-arm with a bayonet.
Poor gals! I do pity ’em. I never see a nice young woman courtin’ a
soldier--or the soldier courtin’ her--as it may be, that I don’t say to
myself, “Ha! it’s very well, my dear. You think him a sweet cretur, no
doubt; and you walk along with him as if you thought the world ought
to shake with the sound of his spurs and the rattling of his sword,
and you hold on to his arm as if he was a giant that was born to take
the wall of everybody as wasn’t sweetened with pipeclay. Poor gal! You
little think that that fine fellow--that tremendous giant--that noble
cretur with mustarshis to frighten a dragon, may to-morrow morning be
stript to his skin, and tied up, and lashed till his blood--his blood,
dearer to you than the blood in your own good-natured heart--till his
blood runs, and the skin’s cut from him;--and his officer, who has
been, so he says, ‘devilishly’ well-whipt at schools perhaps, and
therefore thinks flogging very gentlemanly--and his officer looks on
with his arms crossed, as if he was looking at the twisting of an
opera-dancer, and not at the struggling and shivering of one of God’s
mangled creturs--and the doctor never feels the poor soul’s pulse
(because there is no pulse among privates), and the man’s taken to the
hospital to live or to die, according to the farriers that lashed him.
You don’t think, poor gal, when you look upon your sweetheart, or your
husband, as it may be, that your sweetheart, or the father of your
children, may be tied and cut up this way to-morrow morning, and only
for saying ‘Hollo’ in the dark, without putting a ‘sir’ at the tail of
it. No: you never think of this, young woman; or a red coat, though
with ever so much gold-lace upon it, would look like so much raw flesh
to you.”
_Nosebag._ I wonder the women don’t get up a Anti-Bayonet
’Sociation--take a sort of pledge not to have a sweetheart that lives
in fear of a cat.
_Slowgoe._ Doesn’t the song say, “None but the brave deserve the fair”?
_Nosebag._ Well, can’t the brave deserve the fair without deserving the
cat-o’-nine-tails?
_Nutts._ It’s sartinly a pity they should go together. I only know they
shouldn’t have the chance in my case, if I was a woman.
_Mrs Nutts._ (_From within._) I think, Mr Nutts, you’d better leave the
women alone, and----
_Nutts._ Certainly, my dear. (_Again confidentially._) She’s not at all
jealous; but she can’t bear to hear me say anything about the women.
She has such a strong mind! Well, I was going to say, if I was a sojer,
and was flogged----
_Nosebag._ Don’t talk any more about it, or I shan’t eat no dinner.
Talk o’ somethin’ else.
_Slowgoe._ Tell me--Is it true what I have heard? Have they christened
the last little Princess? And what’s the poppet’s name?
_Nosebag._ Her name? Why, Hél-ena Augusta Victoria.
_Slowgoe._ Bless me! Helleena----
_Nosebag._ Nonsense! You must sound it Hél--there’s a-goin’ to be a Act
of Parliament about it. Hél--with a haccent on the first synnable.
_Slowgoe._ What’s a accent?
_Nosebag._ Why, like as if you stamped upon it. Here’s a good deal
about this christening in this here newspaper; printed, they do say,
by the ’thority of the Palace. The man that writes it wears the royal
livery; scarlet run up and down with gold. He says (_reads_), “The
particulars of this interesting event are subjoined; and they will be
perused by the readers with all the attention which the _holy rite as
well_ as the lofty ranks of the parties present must command.”
_Nutts._ Humph! “Holy rite” and “lofty rank,” as if a little Christian
was any more a Christian for being baptized by a archbishop! Go on.
_Nosebag._ Moreover, he says (_reads_), “The ceremony was of the
_loftiest and most magnificent character, befitting_ in that respect at
once the service of that all-powerful God who commanded His creatures
to worship Him in pomp and glory _under the old law_.”
_Nutts._ Hallo! Stop there. What have we to do with the “old law” in
christening? I thought the “old law” was only for the Jews. Isn’t the
“old law” repealed for Christians?
_Nosebag._ Be quiet. (_Reads._) “The vase which contained the water was
brought from the river of Jordan”----
_Nutts._ Well, when folks was christened then, I think there was no
talk about magnificence; not a word about the pomp of the “old law.”
Don’t read it through. Give us the little nice bits here and there.
_Nosebag._ Well, here’s a procession with field-marshals in it, and
major-generals, and generals.
_Nutts._ There wasn’t so much as a full private on the banks of the
Jordan.
_Nosebag._ And “the whole of the costumes of both ladies and gentlemen
were very elegant and magnificent; those of the former were uniformly
white, of valuable lace, and the richest satins or silks. The gentlemen
were either in uniform or full Court dress.”
_Nutts._ Very handsome indeed; much handsomer than any coat of camel’s
hair.
_Nosebag._ The Master of the Royal Buckhounds was present----
_Nutts._ With his dogs?
_Nosebag._ Don’t be wicked,--and “the infant Princess was dressed in a
rich robe of Honiton lace over white satin.”
_Nutts._ Stop. What does the parson say? “Dost thou in the name of this
child renounce the devil and all his works, the _vain pomp and glory_
of this world?”
_Nosebag._ (_Reads._) “The Duke of Norfolk appeared in his uniform
as Master of the Horse. The Duke of Cambridge wore the Orders of
the Garter, the Bath, St Michael, and St George. Earl Granville
appeared”----
_Nutts._ That will do. There was no “vain pomp,” and not a bit of
“glory.”
[Illustration]
[Illustration]